Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

Lionel Messi now owns the most-liked sports Instagram photo, beating out Cristiano Ronaldo

 

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Lionel Messi officially overtook fellow soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo on Sunday.

Messi set an Instagram record when his post holding Argentina’s Copa America trophy earned more than 20 million likes. That broke Ronaldo’s record of 19.8 million, per ESPN, which he earned on a post honoring Diego Maradona after his death.

Messi and Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 earlier this month to win the Copa America, Messi’s first major title. He scored four goals and had five assists throughout the tournament, and hit a key penalty kick in a win over Colombia in the semifinal round.

"What a beautiful madness!” he wrote. “This is unbelievable! Thank you, God! We are the champions!"

Ronaldo — who is the most followed person on Instagram with 315 million followers — shared a photo of himself with Maradona after his death in November that earned more than 19.8 million likes.

There are only a handful of other posts that have ever earned more likes. The most-liked post ever was a photo of an egg, which took off and earned more than 55 million likes in an effort to set the world record.

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